Interzone

New Science Fiction & Fantasy INTERZONE ISSUE 281 OUT NOW!

TTA NOVELLAS 3: COLD TURKEY BY CAROLE JOHNSTONE

10th Apr, 2014

TTA Novellas 3, Cold Turkey by Carole Johnstone, is out now and can be ordered from our shop either by itself or as part of a massively discounted five-novella subscription: £30, post-free to anywhere in the world!

Raym’s hand froze in front of his chest, creeping back up towards his throat again. “What?”

“In a funny square van.” The kid blinked, blinked, blinked. He wooshed his hands either side of his body like he was starting a drag race, and Raym flinched again. “It’s got black tails – really, really looong ones, like party streamers!”

All Raym wants to do is give up smoking. So why is his entire life falling apart? Why are new mistakes and old terrors conspiring against him? Why is he being plagued by the very worst spectre from his childhood? And why does giving up suddenly – horrifyingly – feel much, much more like giving in?

The 38,500-word novella is already picking up rave reviews:

“Carole has written out of her skin for this novella. How can reading something so dark and insidiously uneasy offer the reader so much pleasure? Cold Turkey is a hammer and Carole Johnstone will cave your skull in with it. Brilliant”—Johnny Mains“Carole Johnstone has the canny knack of making the real seem strange and the weird commonplace. In Cold Turkey, addiction and compulsion spirals downwards into imagined and real nightmares. Top Hat, a creation to rival King’s Pennywise, rides through the urban Scottish landscape that Johnstone has created with an absolute sense of place. Her laugh out loud humour balances her harshness and puts you off-guard before delivering the final blow; if you get in bed with the devil, he’s going to fuck you over at some point”—Priya Sharma“Cold Turkey is rich with nightmarish invention. Johnstone has created a very distinctive villain with the sinister top-hatted tally-van man, yet knows when to hold him back to let other horrors take centre stage. There’s an addictive quality to the well-paced prose that makes reading Johnstone’s stories a habit you’ll never want to kick, and this one’s so good it’s probably bad for you”—Ray Cluley

Cold Turkey is published as a B format paperback, 160 pages on cream bookwove, matt laminated cover with wraparound art by Warwick Fraser-Coombe.

Meanwhile, the second TTA Novella, Spin by Nina Allan, with cover art by Ben Baldwin, is still available to buy, again by itself or as part of the five-novella subscription. It has picked up a great many rave reviews and is shortlisted for a BSFA Award (winners announced at Eastercon on 20th April).

TTA Novella 1, Eyepennies by Mike O'Driscoll, is now out of print, so new subscriptions will begin with Spin unless we are instructed otherwise.